Vindicated

is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit at all seasons (6:17, 18).

The pneumatology of Ephesians resembles that of John, as the christology of Colossians resembles the christology of John. It is the Spirit who takes out of the “fulness” of Christ, and shows it to the believer, who glorifies the Son and guides into the truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13–15, etc.). Great prominence is given to the Spirit also in Romans, Galatians, Corinthians, and the Acts of the Apostles.

John does not speak of the church and its outward organization (except in the Apocalypse), but he brings Christ in as close and vital a contact with the individual disciples as Paul with the whole body. Both teach the unity of the church as a fact, and as an aim to be realized more and more by the effort of Christians, and both put the centre of unity in the Holy Spirit.

Encyclical Intent

Ephesians was intended not only for the church at Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia Minor, but for all the leading churches of that district. Hence the omission of the words “in Ephesus” (Eph. 1:1) in some of the oldest and best MSS.1120 Hence, also, the absence of personal and local intelligence. The encyclical destination may be inferred also from the reference in Col. 4:16 to the Epistle to the church of Laodicea, which the Colossians were to procure and to read, and which is probably identical with our canonical Epistle to the Ephesians.”1121

Character and Value of the Epistle.

Ephesians is the most churchly book of the New Testament. But it presupposes Colossians, the most Christly of Paul’s Epistles. Its churchliness is rooted and grounded in Christliness, and has no sense whatever if 1120 ἐν Εφέσω is omitted in the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS. Marcion retained the Epistle under the title “To the Laodicenes,” as Tertullian reports. Dr. Hort says: “Transcriptional evidence strongly supports the testimony of documents against ἐνΕφέσω.” The arguments of Meyer and of Woldemar Schmidt (in the fifth ed. of Meyer on Colossians) in favor of the words are not conclusive.

1121 This was already the view of Marcion in the second century. Meyer, however, in loc., insists that another letter is meant, which was lost, like one to the Corinthians. The apocryphal Ep. to the Laodiceans (in Fabricius, Cod. Apocr. N. T., I. 873 sqq.), consisting of twenty verses, is a mere fabrication from the other Epistles of Paul. It was forbidden by the Second Council of Nicaea (787). separated from this root. A church without Christ would be, at best, a praying corpse (and there are such churches). Paul was at once the highest of high churchmen, the most evangelical of evangelicals, and the broadest of the broad, because most comprehensive in his grasp and furthest removed from all pedantry and bigotry of sect or party.1122

Ephesians is, in some respects, the most profound and difficult (though not the most important) of his Epistles. It certainly is the most spiritual and devout, composed in an exalted and transcendent state of mind, where theology rises into worship, and meditation into oration. It is the Epistle of the Heavenlies (τὰ ἐπουράνια), a solemn liturgy, an ode to Christ and his spotless bride, the Song of Songs in the New Testament. The aged apostle soared high above all earthly things to the invisible and eternal realities in heaven. From his gloomy confinement he ascended for a season to the mount of transfiguration. The prisoner of Christ, chained to a heathen soldier, was transformed into a conqueror, clad in the panoply of God, and singing a paean of victory.

The style has a corresponding rhythmical flow and overflow, and sounds at times like the swell of a majestic organ.1123 It is very involved and presents unusual combinations, but this is owing to the pressure and grandeur of ideas; besides, we must remember that it was written in Greek, which admits of long periods and parentheses. In Eph. 1:3–14 we have one sentence with no less than seven relative clauses, which rise like a thick cloud of incense higher and higher to the very throne of God.1124

1122 But the very reverse of churchy. Nothing can be further removed from the genius of Paul than that narrow, mechanical, and pedantic churchiness which sticks to the shell of outward forms and ceremonies, and mistakes them for the kernel within.

1123 Eph. 5:14 may be a part of a primitive hymn after the type of Hebrew parallelism: “Awake thou that sleepest,

Arise thou from the dead

And Christ will shine upon thee.” 1124 In literal English translation such a sentence is unquestionably heavy and cumbrous. Unsympathetic critics, like De Wette, Baur, Renan, Holtzmann, characterize the style of Ephesians as verbose, diffuse, overloaded, monotonous, and repetitious. But Grotius, a first-class classical scholar, describes it (in his Preface) as “rerum sublimitatem adaequans verbis sublimioribus quam ulla habuit unquam lingua humana.” Harless asserts that not a single word in the Epistle is

CHAPTER XII

Luther reckoned Ephesians among “the best and noblest books of the New Testament.” Witsius characterized it as a divine Epistle glowing with the flame of Christian love and the splendor of holy light. Braune says: “The exalted significance of the Epistle for all time lies in its fundamental idea: the church of Jesus Christ a creation of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, decreed from eternity, destined for eternity; it is the ethical cosmos; the family of God gathered in the world and in history and still further to be gathered, the object of his nurture and care in time and in eternity.”

These are Continental judgments. English divines are equally strong in praise of this Epistle. Coleridge calls it “the sublimest composition of man;” Alford: “the greatest and most heavenly work of one whose very imagination is peopled with things in the heavens;” Farrar: “the Epistle of the Ascension, the most sublime, the most profound, and the most advanced and final utterance of that mystery of the gospel which it was given to St. Paul for the first time to proclaim in all its fulness to the Gentile world.”

Theme: The church of Christ, the family of God, the fulness of Christ.

Leading Thoughts: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love (Eph. 1:4). In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace (1:7). He purposed to sum up all things in Christ,

superfluous, and has proved it in his very able commentary. Alford (III. 25) remarks: “As the wonderful effect of the Spirit of inspiration on the mind of man is nowhere in Scripture more evident than in this Epistle, so, to discern those things of the Spirit, is the spiritual mind here more than anywhere required.” He contrasts, under this view, the commentaries of De Wette and Stier, putting rather too high an estimate on the latter. Maurice (Unity of the N. T., p. 535): “Every one must be conscious of an overflowing fulness in the style of this Epistle, as if the apostle’s mind could not contain the thoughts that were at work in him, as if each one that he uttered had a luminous train before it and behind it, from which it could not disengage itself.” Bishop Ellicott says that the difficulties of the first chapter are “so great and so deep that the most exact language and the most discriminating analysis are too poor and too weak to convey the force or connection of expressions so august, and thoughts so unspeakably profound.” Dr. Riddle: “It is the greatness of the Epistle which makes it so difficult; the thought seems to struggle with the words, which seem insufficient to convey the transcendent idea.” THE NEW TESTAMENT

359 the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth (1:10). God gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all (1:23). God, being rich in mercy, quickened us together with Christ and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus (2:4–6). By grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory (2:8, 9). Christ is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle wall of partition (2:14). Ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone (2:19, 20). Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach Unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ (3:8). That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God (3:17–19). Give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (4:3). There is one body, and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all (4:6). He gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some, pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints (4:11, 12). Speak the truth in love (4:15). Put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth (4:24). Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for as, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell (5:1, 2). Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord (5:22). Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it (5:25). This mystery is great; but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church (5:32). Children, obey your parents in the Lord (6:1). Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (6:11).

§ 96. Colossians and Ephesians Compared and Vindicated. Comparison.

The Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians were written about the same time and transmitted through the same messenger, Tychicus. They are as closely related to each other as the Epistles to the Galatians and to

the Romans. They handle the same theme, Christ and his church; as Galatians and Romans discuss the same doctrines of salvation by free grace and justification by faith.

But Colossians, like Galatians, arose from a specific emergency, and is brief, terse, polemical; while Ephesians, like Romans, is expanded, calm, irenical. Colossians is directed against the incipient Gnostic (paganizing) heresy, as Galatians is directed against the Judaizing heresy. The former is anti-Essenic and anti-ascetic, the latter is anti-Pharisaic and anti-legalistic; the one deals with a speculative expansion and fantastic evaporation, the latter, with a bigoted contraction, of Christianity; yet both these tendencies, like all extremes, have points of contact and admit of strange amalgamations; and in fact the Colossian and Galatian errorists united in their ceremonial observance of circumcision and the Sabbath. Ephesians, like Romans, is an independent exposition of the positive truth, of which the heresy opposed in the other Epistles is a perversion or caricature.

Again, Colossians and Ephesians differ from each other in the modification and application of their common theme: Colossians is christological and represents Christ as the true pleroma or plenitude of the Godhead, the totality of divine attributes and powers; Ephesians is ecclesiological and exhibits the ideal church as the body of Christ, as the reflected pleroma of Christ, “the fulness of Him who filleth all in all.” Christology naturally precedes ecclesiology in the order of the system, as Christ precedes the church; and Colossians preceded Ephesians most probably, also in the order of composition, as the outline precedes the full picture; but they were not far apart, and arose from the same train of meditation.1125

This relationship of resemblance and contrast can be satisfactorily explained only on the assumption of the same authorship, the same time of composition, and the same group of churches endangered by the same heretical modes of thought. With Paul as the author of both 1125 Lardner, Credner, Mayerhoff, Hofmann, and Reuss reverse the order on the ground of Col. 4:16, which refers to “the Epistle from Laodicea,” assuming that this is the encyclical Epistle to the Ephesians. But Paul may have done that by anticipation. On the other hand, the καὶ ὑμεις (that ye also as well as those to whom I have just written) in Eph. 6:21, as compared with Col. 4:7, justifies the opposite conclusion (as Harless shows, Com., p. lix). Reuss thinks that in writing two letters on the same topic the second is apt to be the shorter. But the reverse is more frequent, as a second edition of a book is usually larger than the first. De Wette, Baur, Hilgenfeld, and Holtzmann regard Ephesians as an enlarged recasting (Umarbeitung and Ueberarbeitung)of Colossians by a pupil of Paul. everything is clear; without that assumption everything is dark and uncertain. “Non est cuiusvis hominis,” says

Erasmus, “Paulinum pectus effingere; tonat, fulgurat, meras flammas loquitur Paulus.”1126 Authorship.

The genuineness of the two cognate Epistles has recently been doubted and denied, but the negative critics are by no means agreed; some surrender Ephesians but retain Colossians, others reverse the case; while Baur, always bolder and more consistent than his predecessors, rejects both.1127

1126 Annot. ad Col. 4:16. 1127 DeWette first attacked Ephesians as a verbose expansion (wortreiche Erweiterung)of the genuine Colossians by a pupil of Paul. See his Introd. to the New Test. (1826, 6th ed. by Messner and Lünemann, 1860, pp. 313 sqq., and especially his Com. on Eph., 1843 and 1847). He based his doubts chiefly on the apparent dependence of Ephesians on Colossians, and could not appreciate the originality and depth of Ephesians. Mayerhoff first attacked Colossians (1838) as a post-Pauline abridgment of Ephesians which he regarded as genuine. Baur attacked both (1845), as his pupil Schwegler did (1846), and assigned them to an anti-Gnostic writer of the later Pauline school. He was followed by Hilgenfeld (1870, 1873, and 1875). Hitzig proposed a middle view (1870), that a genuine Epistle of Paul to the Colossians was enlarged and adapted by the same author who wrote Ephesians, and this view was elaborately carried out by Holtzmann with an attempt to reconstruct the Pauline original (Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe, Leipzig, 1872). But the assumption of another Epistle of Paul to the Colossians is a pure critical fiction. History knows only of one such Epistle. Pfleiderer (1873, Paulinismus, p. 370 sq. and 434) substantially agrees with Holtzmann, but assumes two different authors for the two Epistles. He regards Ephesians as an advance from old Paulinism to the Johannean theology. Renan and Ewald admit Colossians to be genuine, but surrender Ephesians, assigning it, however, to an earlier date than the Tülbingen critics (Ewald to a.d. 75 or 80). On the other hand, the genuineness of both Epistles has been ably defended by Bleek, Meyer, Woldemar Schmidt, Braune, Weiss, Alford, Farrar. Bishop Lightfoot, in his Com. on Col., promises to take the question of genuineness up in the Com. on Ephes., which, however, has not yet appeared. Dr. Samuel Davidson, in the revised edition of his Introduction to the Study of the New Test. (1882, vol. II. 176 sqq. and 205 sqq.), reproduces the objections of the Tübingen critics, and adds some new ones which are not very creditable to his judgment, e.g., Paul could not warn the Ephesians to steal no more (Eph. 4:28), and not to be drunk (5:18), because “the Christians of Asia Minor had no tendency to drunken excesses, but rather to ascetic abstinence from wine; and the advice given to Timothy might perhaps have been more suitable: ’Drink a little wine’” (p. 213). But what then becomes of the Epistle to